Fair warning.

I'm on a bit of a bender, because just tonight I told my nearly 20 year-old daughter about the Trifecta, and it was (in that way only a 20 year-old can make it) ridiculously anticlimactic.  I'm NOT a fan of drama, and I dreaded "the talk," but c'mon - it's a threesome!  Apparently she has suspected, and/or all-out known about it for a long time.  There will be no scandalous Facebook posts from HER on that topic tonight.  Well...I am glad she didn't run screaming, that's the most important thing.

Regarding Missy's post of earlier this evening though, I do appreciate (admire?) her confidence that she can show me she loves me SO MUCH every single day, that I should just get over our inability to make a formal committment.  Maybe I will be!  I have been so far.  And I mean that sincerely.  But I won't be ashamed of the fact that I'm jealous that THEY have the security of marriage, while I am left feeling a little disposable.  Last hired, first fired - isn't that the way it works?  I will be the one that can't go to Red's Corporate Christmas Party.  Or Missy's Physician Appreciation Dinner.  And I will be the one who everyone wonders about at the holiday dinner or Super Bowl Party "who is that again, and why is she here?"  They are a given...the norm...the always accepted.  People who knew them "pre-me" will always root for their relationship to prevail (since the Trifecta is doomed, right?), and people who knew me before will always wonder why I can't go find a man (or woman) of my own.  And bonus...(not)...I can be voted off the island by not one, but two people, in a way that neither of them will have to worry about.  I won't get the health benefits or life insurance or hospital-visitation-on-the-death-bed privileges they are afforded (ok, that's a little far reaching, I know, haha).  But you catch my drift, right?

Of course, on another day, when I'm in a different mood...I am unbelievably humbled by the knowledge that my existence has changed their relationship forever, whether I like it or not.  No matter how good or bad this all turns out, their marriage will never be the same.  That is a lot of responsibility.  Responsibility that I sometimes don't feel capable of handling.  I didn't expect that.  In it's simplest terms, if they kick me to the curb, they hurt one person.  If I leave, I damage two.

Therein lies the difference between a threesome and the Trifecta.  We love, we suffer, we communicate, we celebrate, we fear, we worry...in a sometimes blissful, sometimes painful, but in always a brutally honest way.